DMX Control of your LED Lights is the most technical and powerful ways to control your LED Lights. Lighting scenes are created by computer software and then saved on the DMX Controller for use in what is called Stand Alone Mode, or use away from the computer. Follow this tutorial to see the proper steps to create lighting scenes and save them to your DMX controller for Stand Alone Operation.
The first step is to download and install the free ESA2 software. Download for Windows or Download for Mac users.
After properly installing the ESA2 Software you can now open the program. On start up you will see a screen similar to the picture on the right giving you a few options. You can either start the program in 'Demo Mode' (no controller hooked up to computer) or with the the attached USB interface when the controller is plugged into the computer before start up. When you have your DMX controller hooked up to the computer and proper components attached you can see your lighting scenes in live time.
After your ESA2 software has booted you will see the Setup Tab. This is where we will set up our DMX fixtures to make the programming of your lighting scenes less complicated. If you expand the 'Generic' folder of your 'Scan Library' you will see a large list of fixtures. Choose your fixture type from the list and then drag it into the 'Universe 1' in the patch grid. You will want to drag it to the DMX address(s) which you want it to be. For multiple fixtures you can right click on the fixture in the universe patch and choose 'duplicate.'
After you have setup your lighting fixtures to the appropriate DMX address you can now begin to build your lighting scenes. Start by clicking the 'Editor' tab at the top of the screen. Here you will notice two rectangle boxes labeled 'Scenes' and 'Steps' as well as a long list of sliders to set lighting levels.
Scenes: There are a variety of options for your scenes including 'Loop', 'Next', 'Fade', and 'Trigger'. Loop gives the option of how many times you would like to play the given scene, next allows for specified scenes to play after the loop, fade allows for fading between scene changes, and trigger is a special option using relay triggers to initiate a scene. Keep in mind that next is not an option when loop is set to 'always loop'.
Steps: Steps are the components that create your scenes. The options for your steps are 'Fade Time', 'Hold Time', and 'Dimmer'. Fade time is the time that your lights will take to fade to the color or brightness level of your next step, hold time is the amount of time that the current step will hold or stay on, and dimmer is the brightness adjustment based on a %100 scale.
Lighting Levels: You will notice a long line of sliders at the bottom of your page. This is the area that you will set your lighting levels for your steps. Once you have selected the step you would like to adjust you can now set the sliders to the level you would like. You can adjust by clicking and dragging the slider itself or double clicking the number under the DMX address. Light levels are set to 0-255 by default, you can change this to a 0-100% percentage option by clicking the view tab at the top of the page. REMEMBER THAT YOUR LIGHTING LEVEL WILL NOT CHANGE UNLESS A STEP IS SELECTED AND HIGHLIGHTED.
Initiate the color picker by clicking the square color box above the sliders. Here you can quickly and easily choose a color that you like, or if you are familiar with the RGB color model you can type in each color value from 0-255. BE CERTAIN THAT THE SCENE & STEP YOU WANT TO ADJUST IS SELECTED BEFORE YOU OPEN THE COLOR PICKER.
The scene builder is the most powerful tool in the ESA2 software. You can access it by clicking 
the small grid icon above the Editor tab. Using this tool you can see all of your fixtures and control separately or in groups. You can easily arrange your fixtures, pick static colors or use the built in Effects to generate color changing scenes without having to manually build any steps.
Once you have created the scene(s) that you like you can now save them to your controller. Simply go to the 'Stand Alone' tab and click 'Write memory...' once complete it will give you a message that it was successful. If you want to access your scenes later it is a good idea to save your work to your computer. Unplug your controller and when powered outside of the computer and wired correctly to your decoders or fixtures, it will by default start playing the first scene and you can access your other scenes by various methods per controller type.
